Looking Flash

The story of the shrinking bathing suit and the evolution of the black singlet are only two of the subjects in this engaging book on the role of clothes in our history. Fourteen historians, museum curators and researchers write about the way in which clothes reveal and identify, embody tradition and memory, are both local and global. They discuss the clothes of marching girls and castaways, the use of the kilt, the story of a Maori cloak and of an Otago farmer's extraordinary collection of 1970s high fashion garments. The book is richly illustrated with fashion photographs, advertisements and cartoons.